Mega Trend - Robots work while humans entertain each other

This tiny tennis ball pickup robot is a reflection of a mega trend for investment: human entertaining each other for they don't much else to do.

Just learnt from Twitter about this tiny robot: Tennibot. This cute little thing does something simple: picks up tennis balls during a game while you practice. While it is enjoyable to watch this little robot picking up balls, it is important to recognise that there is a lot of Artificial Intelligent brain power built in the little machine. I am also amazes about the non-tech part of the design that the robot can be pick up and dragged like a travel carry-on case. The basket is smartly designed to swing to up right angle keep the ball from falling off.

It is also a tiny part of a megatrends for investment at work:

Robots do all the heavy lifting. Smart companies, armed with the latest technologies, will disrupt and take over older business

Human, while with much less thing to do, will be forced to provide services to each other. In fact, even the heavy duty professional service job like Health Check, Legal Advice, Education and many others are subject to AI and automation take over. What's left for human to perform in services are probably the purely social engagement part: entertaining each other. Platform that encourage great human interactions will be rewarded handsomely

In this tiny case of Tennibot, the heavy duty boring part of the job in picking up the balls are taken up by the robot while human focus on entertaining or coaching each other. In this case Tennis Coach get to keep the job if he is a good coach. Or in the case of the tennis ball player, he or she focuses on practices so that he or she can excel in a league or game, which provide entertainment values to the audience.

If I may extend this kind of thinking, even the eSport industry is a by product of this megatrend. The game players, through competing with each other, are providing an entertainment service to the market. If he or she is good, they get reward handsomely through prizes, sponsorship and even embedded advertisement in his YouTube video.

As for investment concern, I believe that, again, it's the platforms that perform a good job that encourage a lot of interaction between human beings would be good long term investment. The key evaluation criteria is the "Network Effect" which I have just written about in my last post here. So platform like Social Media, eSport channels and even specialised media channels can be a good long term investment as long as they are growing their active user base and be able to monetise from the network of users.